


Mother Tongue

by anotetofollow



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, F/M, Flirting, Haven (Dragon Age), Languages, Pre-Relationship, Qunari Culture and Customs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24010573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotetofollow/pseuds/anotetofollow
Summary: Myr Lavellan and her new recruit teach one another a little of their languages.(for my love, Athena)
Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Iron Bull, Iron Bull/Female Lavellan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Mother Tongue

It had been an interminably long day. Not the good kind, not a day when problems were fixed and enemies were vanquished and everyone left thinking they had done something worthwhile. It had been the paperwork kind, the bureaucracy kind, the endless meetings with nobles about trade routes kind. Josephine insisted that, as the supposed Herald of Andraste, Myr should be in attendance at these events whether or not she had the slightest clue what was going on. And, as Josephine had showed her so much kindness since her arrival in Haven, Myr didn’t feel as though she could reasonably say no.

It was almost dark by the time that the last summit of the day was through, and Myr breathed in a slow sigh of relief as she stepped out of the Chantry. The wind howling through the mountains was crisp, biting, exactly what she needed to shake her out of the day’s inertia. Treading lightly over the snow she made her way down to the Singing Maiden, craving strong ale and the company of people who wouldn’t say the word ‘embargo’ in her earshot.

She was disappointed to find the tavern unusually quiet that evening, with none of her regular drinking companions in attendance. Still, she was grateful for the music and the low murmur of chatter, and she took a seat at an empty table near the hearth. It was pleasantly warm after the damp chill of the Chantry hall, the air rich with the smell of something savoury wafting from the cookpot. Flissa brought Myr a full tankard without needing to be asked. The first sip was like nectar, the taste of hops and hazelnuts foaming against her tongue.

For a while she simply sat there, soaking in the atmosphere of the room. It was nice enough, Myr supposed, but she needed to talk to someone, needed to have a conversation that didn’t revolve solely around the Inquisition. So, when the mercenary captain walked into the tavern, ducking his head to fit through the doorframe, Myr was quick to wave him over. She had recruited the Iron Bull only a few days before, and had been too occupied with her work to visit him since his arrival in Haven. It was interesting, watching him walk across the taproom floor towards her. There was so _much_ of him, like an oak tree, like a mountain, but the way he moved had a certain grace to it as well. Everything about his bearing was controlled, measured, as though there were some part of him kept hidden.

“Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Andaran atish’an. It’s… going.”

He smiled at that, the slightest quirk at the corner of his mouth. “What’s that? Is that ‘hello’ to your people?”

“Ah, no,” Myr laughed. “Not quite. In the trade tongue it’s something like ‘I dwell in this place, a place of peace’.”

“Fancy.” He pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her. There was something almost comical about their contrast, in this place made with human bodies in mind. Bull’s knees stuck up almost above the lip of the table, and Myr’s feet barely touched the flagstones of the floor.

“Elvish usually is,” she said. “It’s a language for songs and stories.”

Bull nodded. “Ah. Qunlat is a language of order and action.”

“Qunlat? Your people’s tongue?”

“Yeah. It’s not as pretty, but it gets the job done.”

Myr rested her chin on her fist, considering this. “So how would you say hello, then?”

“Shanedan.” His voice was lower, rougher when he spoke in his own language. Like steel against stone. “Means ‘I’ll hear you’,”

“Very pragmatic.”

“That’s qunari for you,” he said, laughing. “We get called a lot of things, but subtle isn’t one of them.”

Myr took another sip. It was nice, just sitting with someone and talking, not discussing the Inquisition, simply having a conversation about themselves. Obscure as they were from the outside world, her clan knew very little about the qunari. She was curious about them. What few things she had been told about the horned race from the north painted them as brutish, hell-bent on converting anyone and everyone in their path, destroying all that they could not claim. Nothing about this man aligned with the stories. He was slow-spoken, genial, relaxed in her presence. Though, Myr supposed, tales were not always to be believed; how many people believed all Dalish to be savages, wearing the pelts of the humans they had slaughtered?

“The qunari must have songs,” she said. “Or poetry, or… something. I can’t believe you don’t have art.”

“Oh, we have art,” Bull said. “The Qun is founded on poetry.”

“It is?”

“Oh yeah.” Bull straightened up in his chair, raised his chin high. When he spoke again his voice was deep, almost rhythmic. The sound reminded Myr of the drums that led their soldiers into battle. “Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam Qun.”

“That’s… I wouldn’t say pretty. Stirring, maybe.”

Bull raised an eyebrow at her, took a drink. “Stirring works. Want to try it out?”

“Why not?”

He spent the next few minutes talking her through the lines, explaining what the words meant in the trade tongue first, then guiding her through each syllable, each inflection. Bull was right; it was poetry. _The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless._ No less beautiful than her hahren’s songs, in its own way. Myr stumbled over some of the sounds, her throat unused to the hard consonants and truncated vowels, but she persevered, and before long she was speaking the words with moderate confidence.

“Shok ebasit hissra,” she said slowly. “Meraad astaarit, meraad iwat— it _was_ it, aban aqun. How’s that?”

“Pretty good,” Bull said, nodding his approval. “You need to bear down harder on those t’s though.”

“Still? If I bear down any harder I won’t be able to talk tomorrow.”

“Not your fault,” he said. “You’ve got one of those musical voices. The way you speak the Qun makes it sound like a love song.”

Myr laughed a little, not sure why the air suddenly felt so warm. _Had someone put another log on the fire?_ “Shall I try the next part?”

“Be my guest.”

She cleared her throat, pitched her voice a little lower. “Maraas shokra,” she said. “Anaan esaam Qun.” _Victory to the Qun._

Bull grinned broadly at her, shook his head. “Damn. Is it wrong that I think that’s kind of hot?”

Myr, who had been taking a sip from her tankard, almost choked. “Seriously?”

“I mean it,” he said, resting one elbow on the table. “You ever considered becoming viddathari?” His tone was serious, but there was a glint in his eyes that belied it.

“Is this the part where you try and convert me?” Myr asked.

“Nah,” he shook his head. “Not tonight, anyway. So, is it your turn now?”

“My turn for what?”

“I taught you a bit of my tongue. Teach me a bit of yours.”

 _Seriously, why was it so warm in here?_ “Hmm,” she said. “Alright. Let me think of something good.”

Eventually she settled on a few lines from a lullaby, the words simple enough, she thought, to be picked up by one who didn’t speak Elvish as their mother tongue. She was wrong. Bull _mangled_ his way through the verse, his accent rendering the words almost nonsensical. It had Myr in stitches, clutching the edge of the table as he spoke the children’s rhyme like a battle cry.

“ _Venavis_ ,” she said, waving for him to stop as she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Stop. I don’t think I’ll be making an elf of you any time soon.”

“Can’t be good at everything,” he shrugged, smiling. “Or maybe I’m having an off night. You should try me again some other time.”

“Deal,” Myr said. Her ribs were aching. How long had it been since she last laughed this hard? _Had_ she laughed like this since the conclave? She frowned, trying to remember.

“You look… pensive,” Bull said. “Something on your mind?”

She thought for a moment. “You’ve been away from your homeland a long time, haven’t you?”

“Feels like it, sometimes.”

“Is it ever strange to you,” she asked, “speaking another’s language all the time?”

The question seemed to surprise him. Bull leaned back in his chair for a moment, rubbing his jaw. “I guess I don’t think about it much, these days,” he said. “At first it was strange, sure. Human language is…”

“Ugly,” Myr finished.

He laughed. “Yeah, that’s one word for it. It took a while to get used to. Humans have _so many_ words for everything. But these days I don’t even dream in Qunlat any more.” Something passed across his face then, just for a moment, the slightest clouding in his eyes.

“Must be hard.”

“Can be,” he said. “Get me drunk sometime and I might even tell you about it.”

Myr looked him up and down pointedly. She suspected that there wasn’t enough ale in Haven to take out a man his size. “Sounds expensive.”

“Never said I was a cheap date.” It was hard to tell, with one eye missing, but Myr was certain that he winked at her.

They drank together for a while longer, talked a little more. Bull wanted to know more about the Inquisition — for his Ben-Hassrath reports, she assumed, though his tone was casual enough — and Myr told him in broad strokes how they had come to form, who their allies were, what they intended to do in the future. As much as she had wanted to avoid the subject that evening, talking to Bull about her work wasn’t exhausting in the way it was with others. He listened intently as she spoke, the questions he asked considered, his responses always interesting. _That’s spies for you_ , Myr told herself. _It’s his job to get information. Being charming is all part of that_.

As the night went on people began filtering out of the tavern, and before Myr knew it she and Bull were the only ones remaining in the taproom. Flissa was pointedly cleaning tables nearby, loudly banging furniture about as she set the room to rights.

“I think we should go,” Myr said. “It’s late.”

“Is it?”

“Late enough.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” he said. “Good drink and good company has that effect on me.”

Myr smiled as she stood, trying to fight back the heat rising in her throat. Bull walked outside with her, and instead of turning off towards the Chargers’ camp he began walking up the hill alongside her.

“Urgent business in town?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m walking the Herald of Andraste back to her quarters. What’s the point in being this big if you can’t play bodyguard sometimes?”

“Oh, I’m sure there are other uses. I wish I was as big as you every time I have to reach a high shelf.” Myr was grateful for the evening chill. It cooled her skin, calmed the flush that had been upon her all night. She turned to look at the footprints they had left in the evening’s fresh snow, Bull’s imprints dwarfing hers.

“It’s been good getting to know you, boss,” Bull said when they were in sight of her door. “I like to know who I’m working for.”

“Technically you’re working for the Inquisition,” she said. “Not for me.”

“Come on. Without you and your magic hand there is no Inquisition.”

“Doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing.”

“You think Cassandra and the others do?” he said. “There’s a hole in the sky with demons pouring out of it. No one knows what they’re doing.”

“I guess that’s true.” She gathered her coat close around her, shivering a little in the cold. “It has been good. Getting to know you, too, I mean.”

“Glad to hear it.” He didn’t look at her when he spoke, smiled instead at the jagged peaks of the mountains.

They were at her door then. She rested her fingers on the handle, thought for a moment before speaking. “Thank you,” she said. “I needed that tonight. The past few weeks have been… challenging. It’s good to talk with someone who gets it. The whole ‘outsider’ thing.” Myr felt herself babbling but couldn’t seem to stop it.

Bull just inclined his head, the gesture almost like a bow. “Sataareth kadan hass-toh issala ebasit.” Then he turned and walked back towards the town gates.

“What does that mean?” she called after him. “Bull? What does that mean?”

But he was already gone, turning a corner without looking back. Myr stood in the snow for a moment, deciding to decide whether she was amused or frustrated. Then she went inside, shaking her head. When she finally slept her dreams had no language; in fact, they involved very little talking at all.


End file.
